Coast Guard to Italian captain: Go back aboard!

Francesco Schettino, the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship that run aground the tiny Island of Giglio last Friday, leaves the Grosseto court, Italy, Tuesday.

Francesco Schettino, the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship that run aground the tiny Island of Giglio last Friday, leaves the Grosseto court, Italy, Tuesday.

Photo: Alessandro La Rocca

Photo: Alessandro La Rocca

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Francesco Schettino, the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship that run aground the tiny Island of Giglio last Friday, leaves the Grosseto court, Italy, Tuesday.

Francesco Schettino, the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship that run aground the tiny Island of Giglio last Friday, leaves the Grosseto court, Italy, Tuesday.

Photo: Alessandro La Rocca

Coast Guard to Italian captain: Go back aboard!

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ROME — “You go on board! Is that clear? Do you hear me?” the Coast Guard officer shouted as the captain of the grounded Costa Concordia sat safe in a life raft and frantic passengers struggled to escape after the ship rammed into a reef off the Tuscan coast.

“It is an order. Don’t make any more excuses. You have declared ’Abandon ship.’ Now I am in charge.”

The dramatic recording made public Tuesday shows Capt. Francesco Schettino resisted orders to return to his ship to direct the evacuation, saying it was too dark and the ship was tipping perilously.

The exchange came to light as the death toll nearly doubled to 11 after divers pulled the bodies of four men and a woman, all wearing life vests, from the wreckage. Some two dozen people remain missing.

The Costa Concordia had more than 4,200 passengers and crew on board when it slammed into the reef Friday off the tiny island of Giglio after Schettino made an unauthorized maneuver from the ship’s programmed course — apparently to show off the luxury liner to the island’s residents.

Schettino has insisted that he stayed aboard until the ship was evacuated. However, the recording of his conversation with Italian Coast Guard Capt. Gregorio De Falco makes clear he fled before all passengers were off — and then defied De Falco’s repeated orders to go back.

Romney says he pays US taxes _ about 15 percent

FLORENCE, S.C. — His wealth and taxes suddenly a campaign focus, Mitt Romney said Tuesday he pays an effective federal tax rate of about 15 percent. That’s far less than if his earnings were wages rather than gains from investments and dividends, and the disclosure under pressure triggered a sharp response from the Democratic White House as well as one of his GOP presidential rivals.

Romney told reporters he also received money from speechmaking before he announced his presidential candidacy early last year “but not very much.” He provided no details, but in his financial disclosure statement, released last August, he reported being paid $374,327.62 for such appearances for the 12 months ending last February.

That amount alone would place his income among the top 1 percent of all Americans, and Romney’s description of it as a relatively small amount suggested his overall income was far higher.

Texas school bus crash sends 32 to hospital

TEMPLE — A tractor-trailer clipped a school bus full of students Tuesday, flipping the bus onto its side and sending 32 people — 29 of them children — to a central Texas hospital. Police said a 9-year-old boy was ejected through the escape hatch in the bus roof, and the bus driver was knocked unconscious.

The accident occurred about 7:30 a.m. on Farm-to-Market Road 93 on the southeastern outskirts of Temple, about 60 miles northeast of Austin. Trooper Harpin Myers of the Texas Department of Public Safety said a hardware truck apparently ran a stop sign when it hit the Academy school district bus. Conditions were foggy, but it was unclear whether that factored into the crash, Myers said.

Three of the 29 children being treated were admitted to the hospital, one in critical condition, while the other 26 were discharged, said Katherine Voss, a spokeswoman for the Scott & White Memorial Hospital in Temple. Academy school Superintendent Kevin Sprinkles said the three were expected to recover, although “they all face a long road” to recovery.

Funding cuts felt by Texas volunteer firefighters

AUSTIN — Budget cuts that have reduced annual state grants for volunteer firefighters by almost three-fourths since 2009 had “a huge impact” on authorities’ ability to fight last year’s record-setting wave of wildfires, the director of the Texas Forest Service told lawmakers Tuesday.

Testifying before the Texas Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security, Tom Boggus said yearly grants to volunteer firefighters have fallen from $25 million as recently as the 2009 state budget cycle to $7 million today.

Calif. family of fallen Marine given Navy Cross

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — A Marine who died from a roadside bomb in Afghanistan was awarded the highest honor given to members of the Corps for his heroic actions as he hurled his body into a fellow serviceman and warned the rest of the his squad of the blast.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said Tuesday that 20-year-old Lance Cpl. Donald Hogan is “now part of Marine lore along with the great heroes of the Corps” as he presented the fallen hero’s parents with the Navy Cross. He said his actions placed him among the “bravest and finest” in the Marines.

Mabus spoke in front of new barracks at Camp Pendleton that will be named after Hogan, who was from nearby San Clemente, Calif. The barracks will house troops wounded in the war and those resting. There will be enough rooms to house more than 1,000 Marines.

Hogan was killed in 2009 in Helmand province in Afghanistan while on patrol. The rifleman had volunteered to wear a metal detector that day and help look for explosive devices.

Paula Deen hid diabetes, pushed high-fat food

NEW YORK — Paula Deen, the Southern belle of butter and heavy cream, makes no apologies for waiting three years to disclose she has diabetes while continuing to dish up deep-fried cheesecake and other high-calorie, high-fat recipes on TV.

She said she isn’t changing the comfort cooking that made her a star, though it isn’t clear how much of it she’ll continue to eat while she promotes health-conscious recipes along with a diabetes drug she’s endorsing for a Danish company.

“I’ve always said, ’Practice moderation, y’all.’ I’ll probably say that a little louder now,” Deen said Tuesday after revealing her diagnosis on NBC’s “Today” show. “You can have diabetes and have a piece of cake. You cannot have diabetes and eat a whole cake.”

Wikipedia editors question site’s blackout

NEW YORK — Can the world live without Wikipedia for a day? The planned shutdown of one of the Internet’s most-visited sites is not sitting well with some of its volunteer editors, who say the protest of anti-piracy legislation could threaten the credibility of their work.

“My main concern is that it puts the organization in the role of advocacy, and that’s a slippery slope,” said editor Robert Lawton, a Michigan computer consultant who would prefer that the encyclopedia stick to being a neutral repository of knowledge. “Before we know it, we’re blacked out because we want to save the whales.”

Wikipedia will shut down access to its English-language site for 24 hours beginning at midnight Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday. Instead of encyclopedia articles, visitors will see information about the two congressional bills and details about how to reach lawmakers.

It is the first time the English site has been blacked out. Wikipedia’s Italian site came down once briefly in protest to an Internet censorship bill put forward by the Berlusconi government. The bill did not advance.